McStay calls for fans to get behind team

The sight of Aidan O’Shea scoring a championship goal had almost become as rare as the corncrake.

His two against Sligo in 2021 were struck behind Markievicz Park’s closed doors during the pandemic so the last time he had hit the net in front of an attendance was against Westmeath in an All-Ireland Qualifier at Croke Park back in 2016.

An even rarer sight perhaps, has been for O’Shea not to contest the throw-in for Mayo.

Both things happened on Sunday however, with O’Shea remaining in the full-forward line while Jack Carney and Jordan Flynn leapt to contest the throw-in at the start of both halves, and rattling the Roscommon net after only eight minutes of this Connacht semi-final.

“It was good to see Aidan O’Shea back in around the square. Is that something you’re looking at for the rest of the season? Is the objective to get Aidan in around the square a little bit more?” RTÉ pundit Colm Cooper asked Kevin McStay on The Sunday Game afterwards.

It turns out that not everyone is as obsessed with analysing Mayo, or Aidan O’Shea for that matter, as closely as the Mayo supporters might sometimes like to believe.

“Well in fairness Gooch, we’ve had him there every day since I’ve been manager,” replied McStay who, saving Cooper some embarrassment, did concede that yes, O’Shea will assist “at throw-ins and in the middle when we’re under pressure”.

“But we’re chasing him to be even better. We know he’s better. He can do big things for the group and I think they’re mostly in around the square,” continued the manager in the aftermath of his side’s 1-15 to 0-13 win.

O’Shea’s 1-1 and Tommy Conroy’s 0-2 was double what the pair had scored from play heretofore this season, so allied with 0-7 by man-of-the-match Ryan O’Donoghue, this made for perhaps the most productive performance yet for Kevin McStay’s preferred full-forward line.

“Numbers on the backs of jerseys, they mean nothing, so wherever we get the scores we’ll take them,” he told the assembled media afterwards.

“But it was satisfying that we developed better scoring chances, we felt the chances we put away were tap overs enough, there were no downtown shots, one out of seven jobs. I’m not really interested in that; working the ball through the hands and getting nice, easier shots when there’s no tackle or contact is a much higher percentage. So I am pleased with the return.” 

The statistics supported the Mayo manager’s analysis, with Mayo guilty of only three wides compared to eleven by Roscommon who dropped several more shots short and blasted a couple of late goal chances wide.

“I think we could have managed the finish better so maybe six and a half, or seven out of ten overall. Room to improve,” reckoned McStay.

“Overall, it’s just a ticket to the final. I think it was important for me, important for the team, important for the coaches, everybody, that we got to a Connacht final. It’s the preferred route and now the objective is to go after it and see can we win it.” 

Mayo will play Galway at Pearse Stadium next Sunday week after the Tribesmen received the fright of their lives against Sligo last Saturday afternoon, requiring a stoppage time goal to snatch a two points win against the side they had beaten by 14 points in last year’s provincial final.

“Anything like that in two weeks' time won’t be near good enough to keep the ball kicked out,” was Padraig Joyce’s assessment of his Galway side’s display. He even channelled his inner Roy Keane when asked if the performance – and 1-5 contribution – from corner-forward Rob Finnerty, son of former Mayo star Anthony, was one of the positives he could take from the match.

“That’s his job in there, a forward’s supposed to score. He’s a bit of work to do as well, but he did well enough in fairness.” 

Whereas Galway had never led Sligo until Finnerty’s 71st-minute goal, Mayo never trailed Roscommon at Dr Hyde Park on Sunday, with the teams level only once, when Diarmuid Murtagh kicked his fourth point in the 32nd minute of the first-half. Prior to that Mayo had made a dream start, with captain Paddy Durcan opening the scoring and Aidan O’Shea brilliantly finishing to the net to give the visitors a four points head-start.

“We felt we were the better team but couldn’t hammer it home and that was the frustrating part,” said Kevin McStay about a first-half which ended with his team just one point in front, 1-6 to 0-8. “But then the third quarter we did move it quite well and we were getting into better shooting positions and getting easier scores, so that was satisfactory.” 

In a 17-minute period during the second-half Mayo outscored Roscommon by 0-8 to 0-2 – although there are now concerns about the fitness of team captain Paddy Durcan who limped off in the 48th minute.

“The nice thing is that we have two weeks, we’ve work to do but we think we can get that work done and put up a massive show against Galway. If we come out of that as the champion, well then we’ve a massive opening position in the round-robin. And if we come out as number two, we’re still in a pretty decent position. But we want to win it and I think even our fans need to understand what winning Connacht means as well, because there’s a lot of young players need that support,” said McStay who described the Mayo supporters among the 13,976 in Dr Hyde Park as “subdued”.

“I think we were all a bit cautious, Mayo Inc was just a bit cautious, the players were a bit cautious, maybe management was cautious the way we went about it, and I felt the crowd never got to where we know they can get to.

“We’re a new group, we’ve moved on from where we were 10 years ago, this is another iteration of Mayo and we want to get that support. We have to earn it, we understand that, but we’re in the final now, and we really want our supporters to come out in big numbers against Galway. It’s a significant moment for the group,” he declared.

While neither of the O’Connor brothers, Diarmuid and Cillian, or Eoghan McLaughlin were deemed fit to be included in Sunday’s match-day squad, Kevin McStay said that all three had trained on the morning of the match and insisted they would almost certainly be available for selection against Galway in the Connacht final.